Hi Blue Moon, I remember you also. It is good to see that some do find the willpower and strength to become alcohol free! e-AA was my pathway to at least a few years of sobriety. I have thought about speaking to my Doctor about my drinking, but to be honest, I hate to have it on my health record. Pre-existing condition, etc.. As in the past, I can't really miss a beat with work, etc.. It just seems like any kind or rehab is almost impossible for me to do. It is good to at least be discussing this some though.

I felt that way too! Great thing about AA (besides that it was the ONLY thing I ever found that worked) is that there are no records, no dues or fees... no rules to follow. You can go to one or many meetings in a a day or a week. It is suggested that one get a sponsor... suggested like I would suggest that you put on a parachute if you intend to jump out of a perfectly good airplane!

I laugh a lot these days. It feels good. My liver is healing too, despite the fact that I take Tylenol everyday. I still have preexisting conditions and I think my chart says "alcoholism in remission"... Yeah ~ Doctors do the best they can, but they don't know diddly about alcoholism unless they are an alcoholic.

Keep coming back Bill... stay and laugh with us a while.

If I'm not able to say how I'm working my program today, then I'm not working my program.The e-AA Group's 7th Tradition link: www.e-aa.org/group_seventh.php

Your topic title caught my eye...Finding the willpower and strengthThis is what I need to find in myself. I'm 60 years old now and I remember I use to have strength and willpower when I was younger and even quit smoking totally on my own!! Addiction seems to be the toughest battle I've ever fought!

I know where you are coming from! I have the same problem. I have always been a heavy drinker. I never considered myself an alcoholic until (roughly 14? years ago). A friend of mine went into rehab and I thought how can this person be an alcoholic and I not be? We basically did the same drinking patterns. I was able to completely stop alcohol and anything else (that had been a problem too) for one year. Then I decided to try moderated drinking. That went pretty well for several years. The I stopped again for 9 months. My life partner became very ill and as his life partner, I felt like I just had to have some escape. I started drinking wine in the evenings when I got home. Needless to say, my life was turned upside down, and my life partner passed away in October of 2013. I have been drinking too much ever since. I also retired, then went back to work part-time. I've found that on the days I don't work, it is so hard not to start off the morning with a bloody mary, followed by other drinks throughout the day. So that is about where I am now. I just cannot for the life of me find the willpower to stop drinking! I am not happy about it, but at least I am truthful about it. Thanks for taking the time to read my posts, and if in any way it helps someone, then it was well worth the effort.Bill

The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. That's written in our Traditions. My problem wasn't will power. I had lots and lots of willpower, more than enough for 10 people. I've never had any lack of willpower, but what I finally came to understand about my drinking problem is that I had no desire to stay sober and that it was that lack of desire which kept leading me back to that first drink and another drunk, over and over again. When my drinking got bad enough, I finally found the desire to stop drinking in the rooms of AA meetings. I wanted what those other drunks had found in sobriety, things I had never found, and they gave me hope that I could have what they had if I was willing to do what they had done to get it. I really had no clue what they were talking about but they told me to keep coming back so I did. Every time I went to a meeting I heard at least one other alcoholic share something that I could identify with and it fed my desire to stay sober, keep coming back, and learn more. If you have no desire to stay sober but want it, you can find it in the rooms of AA meetings. I hope you do.

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson